Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| The big brown eyes of the little lads grew bigger and darker yet that day as he told them of his regiment, and of his Italian bugler who blew his trumpet in their first fight, telling the Rough-Riders to advance under cover, or to charge, until a Spanish bullet clipped off the two middle fingers of the hand that held the bugle. Then he went and had it dressed and came back and helped carry in the wounded, all through the rest of the fight, with his damaged hand. He told them of his standard-bearer who carried the flag right through a storm of bullets that tore it to shreds; of how his men were such good fighters that they never gave back an inch, though a fourth of them all were either killed or wounded; and yet no sooner was the fighting over than they all gave half of their hardtack to the starving women and children who came out of Santiago. And he showed them that true manhood and tenderness toward the weak go always together, and that the boy who was good to his mother and sister and little brother, decent and clean in his life, would grow up to be the best American citizen, who would always be there when he was wanted. They almost forgot |